Conventional financial institutions only support financial transactions from one financial institution to another. To limit fraud, these financial institutions require specific information from both the provider of the funds and the recipient before executing a financial transaction. Required information typically includes the parties' full names, the names of the financial institutions, the parties' account numbers and the recipient's ABA routing number. It would be desirable one party to send or request money without the requirement that the party have all of this additional information.
Services like Obopay use mobile telephony devices to transfer funds between parties. When it is desired to transfer funds from one party to the other, both parties register with a third party provider, such as Obopay. At least one of the parties deposits funds into the system from a conventional financial institution. Once funds have been transferred, the party with the funds may transfer all or part of the funds to the other party by accessing the Obopay software, with a mobile device, and entering in the receiver's telephone number to execute the transfer. Once the funds have been transferred, the recipient may access the funds by accessing the provider software. One drawback associated with such prior art systems is the requirement that the parties have each created a third party account with a third party provider before the funds transfer can take place.
Another drawback associated with such prior art systems is the requirement that the party seeking to transfer the funds has access to the recipient's telephone number. Still another drawback associated with such prior art systems is the difficulty associated with putting funds into and taking funds out of the system. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system for transferring funds from one party to another that did not require the registration of both parties before the transaction, and which did not require having the other party's telephone number stored prior to the transaction. It would also be desirable to facilitate the input and output of funds into and out of the system.
It is also known in the art to transfer funds from one party to another using alternative information, such as an email address. Paypal is an example of a financial transaction processing system that allows parties to transfer funds to one another using only the other party's email address. One drawback associated with such prior art processes is the requirement that both parties preregister with a third party provider and set up accounts with the system prior to transferring funds.
Another drawback is the requirement that the party initiating the transfer of funds must have the requesting party's email address, prior to initiating the funds transfer. While funds can be transferred directly from a Paypal account to a conventional financial institution, it would be desirable to provide a system which did not require preregistration and third-party account creation by both parties with a particular provider. It would also be desirable to provide a system that did not require the party transferring funds to have specific information about the recipient, such as email address, on hand.